


Wilderness Mementoes

by Mab (Mab_Browne)



Category: The Sentinel (TV)
Genre: Gen, The Sentinel Secret Santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:54:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27943367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mab_Browne/pseuds/Mab
Summary: Jim and Blair do a favor for William Ellison that unexpectedly involves angry marijuana growers and other dangers.
Comments: 20
Kudos: 21
Collections: 2020 'The Sentinel Secret Santa' - Gift Exchange





	Wilderness Mementoes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [unbelievable2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/unbelievable2/gifts).



> Happy Holidays, Unbelievable2!

“Oh, hey, Dad.”

Blair had his back to Jim, working at marking student essays with a touch of post-Ventriss apprehension. Being a nosey parker about Jim’s phone call was as good a break as any, given that no egregious, violence-threatening violation of academic ethics was apparently happening tonight. He straightened papers, did some sorting, while listening not to Jim’s words exactly, but the tone. A tentative wariness entered the conversation, and Blair’s attention sharpened.

“I …suppose I could do that.” A silence while Bill Ellison said something. “Yeah, sure, a weekend break. I can pick the keys up from you on the way…. Yeah, sure, Dad. I’ll let you know a good time, and we can work out some dinner arrangements later.”

The conversation ended. Blair stood to make himself some tea, or maybe some decaf coffee. He’d decide when he got to the kitchen shelves.

“So what did your dad want?” he asked, taking a look at Jim.

“A favour,” Jim said, terse in words but not in attitude. His expression was still wary, but thoughtful. “A friend of his – her only kid passed away, a grown man, but she’s pretty torn up about it and she’s getting frail. The son was spending a lot of time at a family cabin, and she doesn’t have anyone she trusts to go up there and check it out before the winter sets in. You know, itemize what’s up there, check out that the place is secure.”

“And who better to go up there than Bill Ellison’s outdoors loving son? Who also happens to be a cop.” Tea, Blair decided, and tried not to feel petty that Jim didn’t like most of Blair’s teas and so there was no particular need to offer to make tea for two. A wave of weariness ran over his skin.

“Something like that. Not that I’m expecting I’ll need to do any policing. Just helping someone out. And with Dad and me still kind of feeling our way…” A decision was forming. “It’s no big deal, not even that far to drive and it’s nice country, out past Leavenworth-“

“You don’t have to justify yourself to me, Jim. Like you said, no big deal if you want to help your dad’s friend out.” It came out sharp, embarrassingly so, and Blair felt himself flush. “I’m, uh, I’m making tea. You don’t like my blends, but I could start some coffee – some decaf coffee – if you want?”

“Thanks, but no. And I wasn’t _justifying_ myself, Sandburg. I was thinking of asking if you wanted to come along, that’s all.”

It was vital that Blair not pause too long before he answered, not in a post-Ventriss (post-Alex, post-fountain) world. He laughed, and hoped he didn’t sound weird or stressed. “I guess I’d better pack my thermals. In case the cabin isn’t weather-proof.”

“The way you feel the cold you’ll want some thermals anyway,” Jim said; more relaxed, less defensive. God, they could both do with a little less defensiveness. Maybe going into some wilderness area with Jim would be a good idea – knit up some of the frayed connections of the last few weeks. Or maybe it would be a terrible decision but, Blair thought, there’d been a lot of competition lately for what counted as terrible decisions (and who’d been making them). The woods, and some cabin, it was. Nature, seclusion, peace.

“When were you thinking about going?”

“Weekend after next, it’s clear without me having to change shifts. My father picked his moment - he must have an in with the PD.” It was a joke, mainly. “So you would be free?” So carefully casual, Jim in this moment. 

“Yeah, I’d be free. Me and my thermals, man.”

“Good.” Jim stood, to hover by the kitchen island. “Maybe I will have some coffee – some decaf coffee – but I can make it myself.” He walked behind Blair, heading for the coffee maker.

“Your dad won’t mind me tagging along? I’m not sure that he quite knows what to think about me, sometimes, even allowing for the senses.”

“I think my father has decided that ours is a strange and wonderful relationship and he’ll leave it at that.”

Blair chuckled. “So that makes me the strange, and you the wonderful, right?”

Was there the slightest check in Jim’s movement beside him? “I’m not so certain about how that works out, Chief,” Jim said lightly; Blair wasn’t fooled. He knew Jim far too well for that.

* * *

The weekend after next for the cabin put them onto the edge of late fall, early winter where on average it probably wouldn’t snow. On average. Probably. Blair had packed his cold weather gear anyway.

“Chief, you know that if the cabin is that bad we’re just going to turn around and spend the night in Leavenworth.”

“Be prepared, you know?”

“Be prepared like me practically memorising the map so I don’t have to rely on your navigation?”

“Something like that,” Blair had said, and tried to feel like they were reaching for the old banter that used to come a lot easier.

That left them in the truck, heading into the backwoods beyond Leavenworth, along a twisting dirt road.

“Did you bring that crazy hat of yours?” Jim asked. They jolted over a rough patch and Jim swore under his breath.

Blair waited until he was sure he wouldn’t bite his tongue off before he replied, “My ushanka? Yeah, sure. It’s warm, and calling it crazy is an insult to centuries of canny cold-climate dwellers.”

Jim snorted at that, while dropping both speed and a gear to manage a twisty bend. “This is Washington State, not Siberia.”

“I don’t like being cold,” Blair said. He felt the cold more keenly the last few weeks. He didn’t think that the weather in Cascade had changed that much since last winter, so he guessed it must be him. Did near-death experiences reset your body’s ability to regulate temperature, to endure discomfort? Somebody should write a paper.

“Fair enough,” Jim said, sounding subdued. Blair turned his head to look out the window. The woods here weren’t thick. He could see through gaps to the main road below, the rail tracks that they’d crossed earlier above that. Nancy Burnham, Bill’s friend, had spoken nostalgically of the vacations she’d spent in the family cabin, regretted the likelihood that she’d have to sell it. Her keys sat in Jim’s pocket now and a disposable camera sat in the glovebox, for the confirmation of whatever state they found the building in, good or bad. Bill had discreetly explained that the son had killed himself before they went in to meet her, but not at the cabin itself, for which Blair was grateful. Influences lingered. 

A dirt bike rider shot out in front of them, and crossed the road before heading a more direct route up the slope. 

“Ass,” Jim snapped. The guy had looked in his forties, easy to judge because he was helmetless, and Jim muttered, “Just goes to show you’re never too old to be stupid.”

“Another reason why Mrs Burnham wants someone to check her cabin out, I guess,” Blair said.

“Yeah, not far now.” The road crested on a small plateaued area, more of a terrace, and Blair could see the cabin. “And here we are.”

“Here we are,” Blair said, and clambered out of the truck to stretch his legs and take the pressure off his backside. It had been a bumpy haul up the slope. The air was very sharp and cold, and Blair had a feeling he’d want his big furry hat sometime this weekend. Jim took a few steps towards the cabin and then he stopped. “Get back in the truck.” It was an order and Blair didn’t delay, but he stopped mid-step as a gun-shot shattered the air.

There was a man, armed with a rifle, and another behind him, the dirt-bike rider.

“Don’t move,” armed guy demanded. Jim had his hands up. Blair stayed where he was, half-in, half-out, half-scared, half-pissed off.

“Hey!” he said over the open door. “We’re here with the owner’s permission.”

“I don’t think they care about that, somehow, Chief,” Jim said quietly. He kept his hands up. He hadn’t bought his own gun, not for a quiet weekend in someone’s Leavenworth cabin.

The guy in front pointed his weapon directly at Jim, and Blair’s heart leapt in wild fear. The guy behind looked almost as frightened as Blair felt. “Danny, don’t be crazy!”

Danny didn’t look behind him. He kept his eyes, and his gun, on Jim. “So what do you suggest?”

Nervous guy’s eyes bugged nearly out of his head. “Not shooting anyone, that’s for sure.” His mouth worked a moment before he said,” Lock ‘em in the old shed, and we’ll work something out.

“Christ, you’ve always been squeamish.” The gun stayed dead steady, but there was a jerk of the head to go with the words. “You. Throw over your keys.” Jim obeyed, and the keys hit the ground with a jangle. “Both of you step away from the truck. Chuck, you make sure they’re not armed.” A brief pause. “Get on with it, Chuck.”

Chuck came forward to check the back and interior of the truck before he performed the world’s least enthusiastic pat-down. He was stepping away from Jim as Blair fumed at the ridiculousness of it all, when Jim grabbed Chuck and almost literally swung him towards Danny.

“Run for the trees,” he yelled, and Blair set off at a sprint. The sound of a gunshot gave him extra speed, but he still turned his head to see Jim beside him. Good. Jim running beside him was good, the cover of the trees was at least a plan. They could organize some sort of ambush, grab Danny’s gun, get out of this mess, because he had a gut feeling that Jim and he were on the same page when it came to Danny not being ‘squeamish’ at all. They were well under the tree cover, and Jim pointed a direction. Fine, Blair would absolutely follow the sentinel’s lead here. There was even something of a trail. 

Something gave beneath his foot, and he thought, no, damn it, no twisted ankles… before his whole leg hurt, focused on a point just above his ankle, and he was on the ground, yelling in shock and pain. 

“What…” he managed to get out, a whole coherent word. “Oh my god.” His foot was caught in an animal trap. “You have got to be kidding me!”

Jim was kneeling on the ground, face grim, his hands hunting for the release. At least, Blair assumed, hoped, he was hunting for the release, and then it hit him. No way was Blair running anywhere after this.

“Jim! No! Leave it! You can get away, man, get help, do your thing later.”

Jim only shook his head, leaning on the awful thing caught around Blair’s ankle. “Can you pull your foot out?”

“Will you just go!” Blair nearly shrieked it, and then looked past Jim. There was Danny, rifle in hand, smirk on face. Blair would have spat at him if he could have summoned the phlegm in his suddenly arid mouth.

“Good for all kinds of vermin, a trap that size,” Danny said. “All that got you was a longer walk to the back of the cabin. Up you get.” 

“Maybe you want to give me a moment to get my friend’s leg out of this?” Jim snarled.

“Get on with it.” 

Jim got the leverage right, and Blair pulled his leg free with a couple of pained, humiliating noises. “Shit, god, shit,” was his mantra as Jim gently drew him upright and put one strong arm around him. The effort of walking, even with Jim’s help, drove him to a hazed, aching silence. They trudged past the truck, to the cabin and around it; Chuck bellyached, from a safe distance, about Danny’s willingness to shoot when Chuck was right in front of him, goddammit! Behind the cabin was an ancient but well-built shed, maybe for wood or tools, but empty barring a few plastic containers that looked and smelled like they might once have contained plant food. They were locked in, in semi-darkness. Blair was lowered to the ground to sit, feeling sick and shocky. Jim, little more than a looming figure in the dimness, stood by the door. Listening, Blair presumed.

“What the hell is going on?” Blair demanded.

“We wouldn’t have been sleeping in the cabin, Chief. Can’t sleep in a cabin full of weed. These guys have quite the plantation growing inside.”

“Oh, that’s just great.”

“I smelled it on the wind as soon as I got out of the truck.”

“Our bad luck that you don’t have to be a sentinel to hear said truck coming up the hill, huh?” Blair very cautiously tried to ease his leg. There was no ease to be found, and he bit his lip at the pain. “So you figure Mrs Burnham’s son was in on it?” 

“He was supposedly spending a lot of time up here. Hard to see how he wasn’t.” Jim stooped and laid gentle hands along the worst of the injury. “Yeah, that’s gotta hurt. I know it’s not going to make a difference right now, but it could have been worse. Your boot was some protection.”

“I’ll take your word for that, man. Feels plenty bad just as it is.” He put a hand on Jim’s shoulder, just to feel the solid warmth of him. “So what now?”

“We get out of here.”

“And how are we going to do that? Are you planning on picking that lock with your teeth?”

Jim shifted to draw something out of his pants pocket, something that jingled softly: Nancy Burnham’s keys, forgotten in the first flurry of shock.

Blair’s eyes were adjusting enough that he saw, barely, Jim’s crooked smile. “You did point out we were here with the owner’s permission,” Jim said drily.

“Yeah, so I did. I’m not thinking straight.”

“Luckily neither are the weed kings out there. Hold tight, Chief, I’m going to go take a look around.”

Jim let himself out, slowly and cautiously. Neither the lock nor the hinges had seen oil for a while. Blair made his painful way on all fours to watch at the door, not quite shutting it but watching Jim’s progress through the crack he held steady with his hand. The air was still and growing even colder, and Blair shivered.

So far so good with getting out of here. They were cooking with gas - and so presumably were the weed kings. Blair could hear the noise of a generator somewhere. They weren’t about to let their plants be caught in the dark and the cold. Blair’s heart sank as a few gentle flakes of snow wafted through the air, fulfilling the promise of that biting cold. The marijuana was snuggled up in the warm, Blair and Jim not so much. And then Chuck came into view, and Blair’s hand flew to his mouth in desperate reflex to not give Jim away. The two men saw each other, and Jim was too far distant to stop Chuck from running or shouting a warning. But instead, Chuck’s finger lifted in front of his mouth – silence, he gestured. Jim sent one glance back towards Blair and then cautiously – quietly – stepped forward. The two men disappeared around the side of the cabin while Blair waited with his heart beating hard enough to make him sick.

After what was probably less than a minute but felt like eons, Jim appeared, pushing what looked a lot like Chuck’s dirt bike along with him. He purposefully and silently steered it to the door of the shed, as Blair opened the door and dragged himself upright along the frame. 

Jim hustled over and grabbed Blair around the shoulders to guide him closer to the bike. Blair stood in an awkward not quite one-legged stand as Jim tried to steady both the bike and Blair before settling behind the handlebars. “Get on,” Jim murmured, holding out an arm that Blair leaned on heavily to get that much closer. Mounting the bike was easier said than done. Swinging his bad leg over the saddle left him sweating, and he had some scary memories of riding pillion with a Rainier friend back in the day. Jim was not Todd, which Blair was grateful for. Todd had never tried his stupid stunts in the woods, in increasing snow, with potentially murderous marijuana growers on their tails. Getting his balance on the seat with only one good leg was difficult and painful. “You ridden pillion before?” Jim said.

“I’m fine,” Blair said, irritable with pain and nerves. “Let’s go.”

Several things happened at once then. Jim started the bike. There was shouting and Danny came charging towards them, Chuck following in his wake. Danny had a momentum, and fury on his face, that made it clear that it wasn’t the sound of the bike engine that had brought him there, and he was still armed with his rifle.

Jim set off down the slope, not bothering to head for the road, just straight down. Blair flinched hard at another gunshot, and looked behind him to see Chuck on the ground, and Danny turning to fire towards them. His view of Danny was lost to the slope and the woods.

“Do you know where you’re going?” Blair yelled.

“Maybe,” Jim replied, and then, quietly, “Damn.”

“What?”

Jim briefly looked up the slope, but Blair could tell it wasn’t his sight he was concentrating on.

“Danny-boy has a bike too.” That he knew the area and wasn’t laden down with a passenger went unspoken. The going was rough, more direct than they could have managed any other way but not easy and nowhere near fast enough to settle Blair’s fears. He tried to concentrate on hanging on, tried to anticipate how Jim was moving, but the helplessness of being literally along for the ride, and the terrible ache in his leg, just set him on edge. What if his own lack of practice on a bike cost them their escape.

Jim found a relatively open patch. It enabled faster progress and a better view. The snow thankfully stayed light but down below them, Blair could see a view of undulating metal broken up by clumps of trees – a long freight train.

“Jim?”

“I see it.”

“Are we going to get blocked on this side of the tracks?”

“I hope not,” Jim said, in the tone of someone thinking about something else. 

“Danny catching us up?”

Jim didn’t answer that. “Hold on, Chief,” he said, as if Blair didn’t have a death grip around his waist already. They headed back into some trees, as the most direct line down. “Our friend is coming down from the right pretty fast. This is going to get hairy.” Hairy, Blair suspected, was something of an understatement.

The freight train was coming fast too, as the bike shot out of the tree cover and came at the tracks at a right angle. Blair had some vision of them keeping on at speed and vaulting over the rails like some Evel Knievel performance. He knew enough about bikes to know that was stupid but horror still rose in him as Jim slowed. They had a homicidal drug dealer coming up fast - Danny was in his peripheral vision now, riding parallel with the train, which stretched back for terrifying yards to a distant curve – and they were desperate to cross the tracks, and Jim was slowing? They were visible to the train now. They must have been because the train horn blared, long and loud, despite the lack of crossing.

“Jim!” He didn’t have any other words. Jim was angling the bike over the rails, no doubt objectively moving with frantic speed, but Blair didn’t have a lot of objectivity right how. He felt frozen – frozen in his blood, in his bones, in time, which moved with glacial speeds. Unlike the train. He looked towards it, and it filled all his vision. The wail of the horn was a live thing buffeting them. He couldn’t look any longer and buried his head against Jim’s shoulder.

“Put your good foot down,” Jim shouted.

He did so, and felt the lift of the bike as they crossed the second rail; he felt rather than heard the rev of the bike engine, because the train horn screamed in his ears, much like his internal voice yammering that he wanted to live, he wanted to live, hadn’t he come back from the dead once already? Let them live! There was a moment of heart-stopping wobble beneath them as Jim sped away from the lines, and thunderous noise as the train passed them (barely, god, Blair felt the burst of displaced air) and then they were heading down the slope for the road. 

Blair could look around again, although how Jim was breathing through Blair’s grip on him Blair didn’t know. He didn’t loosen that hold, though. He shuddered through the panic, and tried to smother his erratic, shuddering breaths against Jim’s back. It was a broad, strong back, and if they’d been a few seconds slower on the tracks there’d be nothing left of that strength, nothing worth mentioning left of Jim or Blair.

“We did it!” Jim yelled, his own breathing maybe a tad erratic. “You okay back there?”

“I’m, uh, I…” Blair hoped that the swirling in front of his eyes was stress and not snow, because man, were they headed for a blizzard or what.

“Just hold on. Danny-boy’s on the wrong side of the tracks and we have a decent chance to lose him. It’ll be okay.” Jim took one hand from the bike just long enough pat Blair’s hands against his waist, before he headed down the slope for the paved road, and its comparative speed and hopeful safety.

* * *

Thanksgiving was past and Blair was walking well with a cane and a firmly strapped ankle, and grateful for it, but he still needed to elevate his leg pretty often. It was elevated now as he lay on the sofa, contemplating his sock feet, and wondering about where he could get the best deal on some new boots in the New Year. His old boots – well, one was fine, but the other had been cut off and was seriously bloodstained to boot – as it were, haha, Blair slayed himself. Jim’s father had insisted on replacing them, mortified that the favour he’d asked of his son had nearly killed him and Blair. Nancy Burnham’s grief had only been added to, and Blair just wanted this shitty month to be over.

Jim puttered in the kitchen – making a meal for them, nothing fancy, checking out the contents of his shelves.

“You okay, there?” Jim asked. “Is your ankle hurting again?”

“No.” Blair’s hands flicked up from his lap, a usual gesture of dismissal. “No more than usual when I’ve been on it all day,” he amended.

“You want some ice?” Jim’s hand reached out for the door of the fridge.

“No, it’s fine, it’s fine. I’ve been wondering about something though.”

“Judging by your face it’s something worrying.” And there was the voice of Ellison suspicion, lightly carried but waiting.

Blair lifted his head and said with a smile, “No, not that worrying. Just trying to work out the psychology of a dangerous situation. You could have left me when I stuck my foot in that trap, but you didn’t. I told you to. It would have been the sensible thing to do.”

“You’re pissed off about that.”

“No, I am not pissed off. Just analysing it. Working stuff out.”

“You are pissed off about that,” Jim said incredulously. “Why that? What about me taking the chance of us making a run for it? If we’d stayed put you wouldn’t have ended up with a bum leg, and even if Chuck hadn’t decided he was better at being a human being than a criminal mastermind, we still could have gotten away.”

“Well, yeah, but it was still a calculated risk.” Blair made quote gestures with his fingers. “Strategic. Plenty of people can’t shoot straight. But there was no way to get me out that trap in time, and absolutely no way that we could have gotten away from Danny and his gun once I was.”

“You know, Chief, you are incomprehensible to me sometimes. What the hell has ever made you think that I think strategically when it comes to you? Or anything else, for that matter?” The word ‘strategically’ laboured under a heavy burden of sarcasm.

Blair shrugged uncomfortably. Jim was a creature of instincts, true. Everything had been instinctual in Sierra Verde, including trying to leave Blair behind to deal with Alex. He had an analysis that would never be incorporated into his dissertation written out, edited even, but it hadn’t been enough of a purge. He thought that he probably understood what had happened, why Jim had done what he’d done, but the thought of writing the same analysis of his own distress, why Blair had felt what he’d felt… And so he asked Jim entirely the wrong questions, and then felt angry with himself for his avoidance.

Jim came and sat carefully at the foot of the couch. “Look. I know that the last few months have been kind of heavy and… and weird. But you’re my friend, my best friend, and if me being the kind of guy who cuts and runs when his friend is caught in an animal trap,” Jim’s mouth twisted around those words in clear disgust, “is disappointing to you then you’re going to have to learn to live with disappointment.”

“It’s true it’s a better disappointment than some,” Blair joked. Tried to joke. ‘My best friend’, Jim had said, and it did soothe something in Blair, before he looked down at his jeans and considered the stupid games he’d played to get those words. “I’m sorry, man. I guess I’m just processing a lot of stuff, and yeah. Weird and heavy, and then I think and say something stupid.”

Jim nodded, and then patted Blair’s good leg before he retreated in good order to the kitchen. Enough words had been spoken.

Blair stood too, and went to get himself a beer. “You want one?” he asked.

“Maybe with dinner,” Jim said. “And speaking of dinner, as in Christmas dinner…” He paused. “You’re not going to be spending time with Naomi.”

“Mom’s wandering wild and free and a little too far away for my budget this year. She offered to finance me, but a man’s got his pride, you know?” In some things, anyway.

“Okay. So you come to dinner at my Dad’s house. I’m invited, and we worked Thanksgiving. So far as I’m concerned that means you’re invited too. He owes you a good meal, as well as some new boots.”

“Jim, are you sure?”

“To be honest, Chief, I could do with the moral support. Someone to fill in the conversational gaps.” He got a smile that was hard to resist - a purely Ellison mix of sly and plaintive.

“And I should do this because?”

“Because you’re my friend.” Gotcha, Jim’s grin said, and he was right.

“Your best friend,” Blair said, trying out the shape of ‘best’ in his mouth and not surprisingly finding it sweet. Running a little conversational interference (and having the chance to check out the progress of the Jim/William dynamic) wasn’t really that much of a price to pay, especially given Jim’s occasional heartfelt reminiscences about just how good a cook Sally was. “Okay, Jim. You’re on. So is Christmas dinner.”

“Good,” was all Jim said, and Blair smiled, and hoped that the worst of the weird and the heavy was behind them.

**Author's Note:**

> Best wishes from your Secret Santa and your mod!
> 
> Now that the anon period is ended I would like to thank ElmyraEmilie for two contributions to this story, one of which, some advice about animal traps and US slang she already knew about. :-) The other is a little emotional beat where I borrowed some phrasing from her.
> 
> I did attempt to do some research on a variety of topics - riding bikes, train lines in WA State, local weather and forests, the types of animal traps used in the US, but in the end I just asked myself, "what would Paul and Danny have done?' with the results you see here.


End file.
